


Three Postcards Written in Oneida, Kentucky

by proxydialogue



Series: The In-between Verse [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Meta, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:11:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proxydialogue/pseuds/proxydialogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where in a writer does what little he can for Cas and the Winchesters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Postcards Written in Oneida, Kentucky

It's going to storm in Oneida, Kentucky. 

An old, one-handed Gardner looks up over the fence in his back yard and sees a young man with a pen behind his ear standing on the nameless bridge that goes over the little river behind his house. He's a short, scruffy fellow, this stranger on the bridge. The old man waves, but if the stranger sees him he doesn't wave back. He pulls three small, white squares from his coat and puts them in a row along the wall of the bridge. He uses three rocks to keep them from blowing away. 

The stranger taps his finger thoughtfully against the stone and thunder rumbles in the distance. It startles the old gardener, who looks left to see the climbing dark clouds. He frowns, a network of wrinkles shifting in his face, and puts the trowel down to pull over a plastic pot from the gardening center. Carefully, he liberates the plant from the pot and puts it gently in the ground. 

He hopes the storm doesn't drown his new parsley. 

Out of the corner of his eye the reflection of the stranger is a fluid blob in the surface of the water. The old gardener glances up and his chest becomes hollow with what he sees. 

It is like the gaping mouth at the center of each galaxy, swallowing stars whole, what he sees. It is like hearing music in the mind of a genius just before the notes are composed. It is like crying without grief and laughing without joy and breathing without lungs. Even though what he sees is nothing, really; it is just the sum of unimportant seconds. 

He sees the stranger rub his eyes and take the pen from behind his ear, sucking in a deep breath that makes his small shoulders straight. The sky is still blue behind him, but the river below him is gray. He hunches forward, like shifting the burden of a heavy pack, and his pen begins to move. The pen and the writer are voiceless, but the postcards are important. It cannot be said _why_...perhaps something to do with memory and death. 

The old man (I've told you his name, and you've forgotten already: Gardner) is overcome with homesickness for a place that was never home. He rubs at his aching knees and remembers the smell of sweat and dirt and gunpowder. Of blood. He remembers Vietnam and old radio broadcasts. He's smiling at his parsley. 

The old man's heart beats, and the stranger writes against the wind: 

 

 

_Six minutes and fifty-nine seconds_. 

Castiel kneels on a floor with his red hands pushed down against Dean's stomach. He can see, in the shaft of sunlight that streams in from the broken window, the dust in the air that dances madly with every breath he heaves. The dust by Dean's mouth stirs too, clinging to his eyelashes and sticking, unfelt, to his tongue. Dean's lucid green eyes are looking up. Dean is lying on the floor and bleeding. He's lightheaded but he can see, just barely because the sun is in his eyes, Castiel's wild hair and hard mouth. He can hear a voice speaking desperately somewhere else in the room. Neither of them will remember what they are thinking now, tomorrow. 

It's a moment of _in-between_. 

There are four dead women in the room with looks of surprise on their faces. They had discovered the meaning of _an angel scorned_. Hell had fury plenty, but Castiel had wrath. They are draped like torn curtains over the broken furniture. 

"If I got married would you dance at my wedding?" Dean croaks. 

"If you wanted me to," Cas answers patiently. His palms are warm and Dean's lips are pale and a bent nail is digging into his shin. 

Sam is untouched by the moment, saying unkind words to Bobby over the phone in his panic. The phrase _trapped like rats nearly_ , but doesn't quite, enter his mind, and he says: "The rat trapped us, Bobby." He explains that, in this room, Cas is an angel in name only but Dean is still human in every way and he's currently loosing buckets of blood and how do they break the binding spell so they can get Dean to a hospital? For Sam the clock is ticking. 

"Cool. I wasn't sure if angel's danced." Dean grins weakly. Cas feels tight in the chest and throat. Sam's pacing footsteps tremor through the floorboards. 

Angels don't dance. No angel has danced since creation was begun, besides Lucifer. But Cas doesn't say that. He's done worse than dance for Dean. 

Right now he's praying, and that's something else angels don't do. 

Dean closes his eyes. He's in shock, and in a vague way he's aware of it, but he's also fuzzy and comfortable and weightless. He'd float away if Castiel weren't holding him down. The pain is receding and he sort of has to sneeze. It doesn't occur to him that he might be dying. 

"Dean," Cas' voice pulls him back from his thoughts. "Try to remain conscious." 

By the door Sam is using his fingernails to scratch at the sigils in the wood while he parrots the Latin Bobby is reading him. Bobby is in his house, kneeling on the floor in a scattered pile of books, and his fingers are shaking. In the back of his throat is a speech (that starts with: "Fucking idgits,") he's keeping ready just in case the boys get out of this mess. His neighbor is burning a casserole. 

"I would dance at your wedding too," Dean says. 

"Angel's don't get married." 

"Ss' not what I meant." Dean's heartbeat is slow and even. 

"I know," Cas answers softly. 

Dean blinks and squints and wishes someone would turn off the fucking light. He's already forgotten what he was trying to say, but he's not in a hurry. 

In seven more seconds Sam is going to break the last seal and Cas and Dean will vanish in an unfelt wind and then he'll be driving down highway 421 at ninety miles an hour to the nearest hospital. The doctors will say that Dean is "Out of the woods," but Sam and Cas will stay all night anyway. Bobby will have twenty-seven hours to get properly pissed before the boys reach him. 

Until then Dean and Cas keep looking and staring and looking like they are staring at each other when really they are watching the dust swirl between them. 

Bobby is smelling something like burnt toast and thinking he's finally having that stroke. He gets in one more "idgit" at Sam before the seven seconds are up. 

 

 

The stranger stops writing abruptly and stretches his back and shoulders in relief. He tucks the pen back in its place, satisfied. Another small part of the story is finished. 

He looks up and sees the old gardener is watching. When the stranger grins lightning shoots through the sky. He reaches down and, one by one, picks up the rocks and drops them into the water. The wind picks up each liberated postcard and blows them into the old man's yard. 

The stranger walks away whistling. The clouds are heavy overhead. 

The gardener picks up the postcards and quickly pats down the dirt around his parsley before hurrying into the house. 

It's going to storm in Oneida, Kentucky.


End file.
